On May 20th, when I was ten years old, I had tonsillitis.
It was probably due to sheer excitement and nervousness over the fact that my mother and father were getting married.
On the way to the wedding at Tibirke Church, my mother and grandfather stopped at the avenue leading up to the Sandflugtsmonumentet (The Sand Drift Monument).
They were early, so there was time for a bit of tobacco.
The portal-like ‘Sandflugtsmonumentet’ (The Sandrift Monument) stands atop a small hill in Tibirke, a miniature Amon Sûl.
Designed by Elias David Häusser and Didrick Gercken in 1738, it documents the successful efforts to combat sand drift that plagued the region from the 1500s to the 1700s.
Work to combat the drift began in 1724. Locals and soldiers from Copenhagen worked together to dig trenches, build fences, and plant willow, cherry, oak, and beech trees along with hardy grasses like marram to stabilise the dunes.
This hard work led to what would become Tisvilde Hegn, a massive protected forest.
From a distance, or to a child that hasn’t learned to read, the inscriptions look like as runes: three languages, Danish, Latin, and German, testify to the period’s polyglossia.
Today Tisvilde Hegn stretches along a roughly 7 kilometer coastal strip and covers around 1,300 hectares.
Also see:
Triptychs for Solar Eclipses
The Meaning of “The Time Is Out of Joint”
Danish Artist & Photographer ~ Kasper Bergholt.
Wet-plate Simulation of Edgar Degas Visiting Sandflugtsmonumentet in Tisvilde
